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Carey, Red (audio interview #1 of 2)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - Red Carey was interviewed at the home of his friend, Jake Briegel, by Jake's daughter. Jake and his wife left them alone during the interview. Carey is a large man who was used to getting jobs because potential employers believed he was strong and able to do heavy work. Although he was retired, he still spoke in a strong voice and described his work in colorful language. 5/31/1978
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- 2020-10-05
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- SUBJECT BIO - Ivan "Red" Carey described himself as a "boomer." He worked in oil booms in southern California during the 1920s and 1930s. When he couldn't find an oil related job, he took other temporary work to support himself and his wife. After World War II, he did maintenance work for Long Beach Oil Development until that consortium laid him off before he could qualify for a pension. In this single interview, Carey talks about his early life in Phoenix before he migrated to southern California with his family. Here he found work as a laborer in the oil fields and discovered he could earn more there than his father who was an experienced teamster. So he continued working on oil wells where he learned to perform many jobs on a drilling rig and observed how the oil business changed while he was working it it. The interview was part of a project to study the impact of the discovery of oil on the development of Long Beach. TOPICS - family background; finding work in the oil fields; and drilling oil wells;
- *** File: lhowrcarey1.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-6:22)... On his mother's side, his grandfather was a carpenter from Illinois and his grandmother a housewife from Virginia. His father's family were railroad workers, as was his brother. Carey went into the oil industry at the age of 17, about 1924 He was the only person in his family to be involved with oil. He started working in Torrance soon after oil was discovered there and later worked in other southern California oil fields. He worked for General Petroleum for 4 years but most of his jobs only lasted a few months at a time. Workers worked where there were jobs or went to where the work was; they were "boomers". He worked 1 1/2 year for Superior Oil Company in the Long Beach field. That company was also known as the "Killer Keck" oil company because they didn't care if workers lived or died as long as the work got done. Workers were fortunate if they got away without loosing fingers, toes or something. Later he worked for 25 years for Long Beach Oil Development (LBOD) before retiring. The LBOD was a consortium of several oil companies. (6:22-9:43)... Carey was born in Kansas City, Missouri. His father worked on the railroad and where ever else he could find a job. He came to California in 1921 from Arizona; his family had earlier moved there from Illinois. His father was a teamster in the oil fields. Carey went to work in the oil fields because the pay was really good. He made $6.50 a day, while his father, an experienced teamster, made only $6 a day. He worked in the oil fields for about 40 years before he retired, 7 years before he was interviewed. Because he started working when he was so young, he didn't finish his education. He only went to high school for one year in Phoenix. (9:43-12:58)... He went to school from kindergarten to the 8th grade in Phoenix. His father moved to California in 1921 and his mother followed a year later. When Carey got to California he attended high school for one day before dropping out and going to work. He was ashamed of his clothes and shoes and decided to work instead of going to school. He made more money than skilled workers such as carpenters because there was a shortage of men willing to work in the oil fields and the industry was booming. (12:58-14:44)... His father worked for the Southern California Gas Company and got Carey a job there. He didn't like it because he had to dig ditches and it was really hard work. He found another job on a drilling rig, which was also difficult work, but he made a dollar more than at the Gas Company. Carey worked about 40 years in the oil fields, off and on. He held other jobs along the way. He drove a truck and did some pile driving; these were also "boom jobs". Job opportunities came and went, but he never complained about the unsteadiness because he always had more work than others (14:44-16:56)... Before the Depression there were at least 200-300 strings of tools working to drill oil wells in California. During the Depression there were only 3 strings working but Carey got a job on one of them. He was big and strong; he earned $1 a day for working 8 hours. There were times when people couldn't find jobs for months at a time. Carey and his wife were able to live well in Artesia on $8 a week. (16:56-19:32)... Many people didn't want to work in the oil fields because the work was dangerous. A lot of people got hurt working on oil wells. During the oil boom there were many drilling rigs operating. Each rig required at least 15 men; 5 men worked on each 8 hour shift. A lot of people were coming to California from Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, Illinois and other states with oil fields and, as experienced oil workers, they found jobs right away. There was a lot of work and oil companies had to pay higher wages to attract workers. When he started working at 17 he made $6.50 a day, which was a lot compared to men who had worked much longer in other jobs. This is the reason he went into the field. (19:32-22:28)... Carey and a friend decided to join the Navy once when he was laid off from a job. He was 17 at the time and could not join until he was 18 without his parents' consent. On their way to see the Navy recruiter he and his friend were approached by a man who was looking for experienced men to work on an oil rig. They both claimed to have experience and were hired. When they started working and it became clear they had no experience, Carey told the boss that he had worked on a rig, cutting weeds. The man decided to let them stay and they learned to become "roughnecks". They learned how to use drilling tools on the rigs. This was during an oil boom in 1924. (22:28-27:12)... On a drilling crew, the driller was the boss. The derrick man worked at the top of the derrick and guided 96' joints of pipe into a rack when the crew pulled the drilling pipe in and out of the hole they were drilling. The cat head man stood on the floor of the derrick and pulled on a wrench that broke apart the pipe joints when the crew took the pipe out of the hole. The lead tongs man stood behind the cat head man and backed him up. There was also a pipe racker and those 5 men made up the drilling crew. There was a tool pusher, who was the drilling superintendent; he supervised all of the workers on all of the shifts and sometimes supervised more than one well. Everyone worked 8 hours a day; shifts changed at 8 am, 4 pm and midnight. It took 15 men to keep the drilling going 24 hours a day. Some crews included an extra man who fired the steam boilers that powered the rotary drilling equipment. In the early days, this was more common because each rig had several small boilers that were hard to keep fired; later, oil wells used larger boilers that were easier to keep going Drilling continued around the clock because if drilling stopped, the equipment might become stuck in the hole. It would be more expensive to get it out and start up again than to continue working all day and night. (27:12-34:14)... Pay was the same for all of the shifts, but the driller , who was the boss on the derrick floor, made $3-$4 more then everyone else. The cat head man also made a little more. Some companies considered the cat head man #2, while others considered the derrick man to be the #2 man. In that case, he made made $1 a day more than the other crew members. Crew members were also responsible for keeping the equipment on the rig in good repair. The hydraulic system was important. Rotary drilling worked because cuttings that were generated as the bit rotated in the hole were washed out in the fluid, called mud, that lubricated the drilling process. The mud was heavy to try to prevent gas pockets, that might be underground, from blowing out. (34:14-40:27)... When the oil boom in southern California started, the story was in papers around the US. That's when his dad decided to come to Long Beach to look for a job. That first well on Signal Hill was still, at the time of the interview, pumping oil. Oil wells have to pump enough oil to pay back the money that was invested in drilling them. Some wells were drilled really quickly and paid back their investors 10 times over in 30 days. Those were the wells investors were looking for. If all oil wells turned out that way, there'd be alot more wildcatting or drilling oil wells where the owners didn't know if there was oil under the ground or not. Some drilling companies didn't just drill all the way to the bottom to see if there was oil. Many drilled part way to where they hoped the oil was located and then did tests to see what they might find if they drilled further. (40:27-45:06)... Testing continued if oil or gas were discovered in the hole. Further tests tried to determine how much oil was there. Then there were about a "jillion things" that had to be done before the well could begin producing. The drilling crew had to pump cement casing into the hole to make sure that the oil and underground water stayed separated. Then the crew put perforated pipe, called a liner, in the hole. This let the oil flow into the hole so it could be pumped out. The liner kept sand and other things out of the oil that is pumped out to be shipped to a refinery. End of tape
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